The necromancer, Bonaparte, stared at the horizon with bored black eyes. Beneath his gaze, the visitors bearing their flag of truce were ushered forwards by his skeletal honour guard.
âI will accept your surrender now.â
The commanding officer - not the original, but the surviving one - stepped towards the tyrant. She wore a Brigidâs Cross made of dirty reeds on her lapel.Â
She could see the setting sun reflected in the necromancerâs obsidian gaze. Soon, the light would fade and dead would be at their strongest.
âIâm afraid I cannot offer you a surrender, Emperor of corpses. But I will beg for mercy, for you are the only soldier in your army with a heart to feel it.â
âMy heart stopped beating long ago.â
âYet I pray that enough feeling echoes in it still to grant clemency, despite your profanities.â
Then did the necromancer turn his gaze towards her. They were eyes that read fate and defied laws. She could have sworn she felt the air curdle, the ground buckle, and the light twist with its weight.
âOh, your kings and queens are all so horrified by me and by what I do. They call it a crime against nature, a sin against god. Or *gods*.â He gestured to the cross on her uniform. âBut if one has a war to fight - and if one believes in equal parts that war is *just* but also that no war *can* be just ⊠is this not the most ethical, most correct thing? To fight the war in such a way that does not harm your subjects? Surely only a coward would let the disapproval of a few dozen gods sway them from saving a life?â
He paused as if to take a breath, but his chest did not move (he no longer needed air and considered it ill-disciplined to fall back into the habit of breathing).Â
The officer paused too. His words felt heavy in her head. His dry voice scratching uncomfortably at her mental walls. But in his eyes, she still saw the last dying rays of sunlightâŠ
âI suppose, tyrant of sunset, that were I in your shoes I *would* be tempted to keep harm and death from me and mine. But even if I could, I hope I would not do what you have done. For I would fear what other harm I was doing.â
âAnd what harm is that?â
âTo put it simply, marshal of styx, those bodies that fight for you? Theyâre *not *yours*. You stole them. Dug up graveyards, cracked open tombs, emptied ossuaries.â She tutted and sunlight flared in her disapproval. âMaybe a few are honoured comrades, true believers, but most? They wouldnât even know you to say good morning, yet alone to salute. Their spirits may be gone, but that doesnât mean you get to make their dust dance.âÂ
âYou defy me because you think my army is ⊠theft?â
âThatâs my line in the dirt. It may not be a good line. It may be a damned stupid line. I donât know. But there it is - I know it, I feel it, itâs mine - like the bones that hold me upright.â
Bonaparte permitted himself a small sigh as a luxury.
âAnd after you die, those same bones will bow to me.â